Between
by ebonbird
Summary: The science ninja team Gatchaman's second, Joe Asakura, knows he's dying.


Summary: Joe knows he's dying, but he hasn't told a soul.  
Rating: R. For profanity and adult situations. Mind you, the characters are adolescents.   
Disclaimer: Shiratori no Jun, Joe Asakura, Ken Washio and Galactor belong to Tatsunuko Productions and are used without permission. Plot's mine, though. Send all feedback to me. Please don't sue me Tatsunuko, I'm just doing my part to keep Gatch-love alive. Anyone who wants to archive this or send copies of this any where, please contact me and get my permission before doing so.

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0213  
Somewhere in Arizona

Joe leaned his head against his hand. The soft plastic rim of the condor machine's open window bit into the sparsely haired skin of his upper-arm as he waited for the light to change. A line dimpled the skin between his eyes.

Night had dragged itself over the land long ago. Nobody out but him and the coyotes. No one around, no one at all, neither MP's nor cops, nor late night racers.

Somewhere, parked off the side of the road, in the quiet gentle night were lovers. Enjoying the respite gained by his team's victory against Galactor. Alone with each other in the cool night air.

As for him, it was just him and his baby. Idling, when she should've been going flat out on this highway, his hands guiding and correcting her thrilling power and speed. His thoughts were too heavy. Outside of battle his secret, the same secret that fueled his dark-joyed spleen, made him a hollow thing. 

He turned his head a bit, and looked out of the window, seeing nothing but darkness beyond the street-lights. He studied the heavens. This sky was the biggest he'd seen in a while. It went on forever, its color dark and deep, stars scattered in it like grains of sand. Like in an hourglass.

How many kills had he made this afternoon? Not enough. Not nearly enough. Even now, as he waited for the light to change, enemies could fall out of the beautifully starred night with crushing fire. Between the shrapnel in his brain and fucking Galactor he didn't have much maneuvering room.

Tick. Tick.

The light turned green. His right foot flexed. Had things been normal it would have slammed down on the gas with jarring force. Nah, if he was acting normal he would've blown the fucking light without a sidewards glance, guest of a foreign country or no. 

His lips pooched out as he bit the inner sides of his mouth. He, Condor Joe, the scariest science ninja ever, was gonna die on account of some dog. Funny thing, he'd known that if he'd failed to rescue the puppy he would not have been able to live with himself. He'd saved the puppy, and looked like he didn't get to live with himself anyway.

The grumble of the approaching motorcycle swarmed at the edges of his concentration. He knew that motor. Had helped put it together himself.

The driver of the cycle eyed the blue racing car with curiosity, surprised that the familiar vehicle was idling on a road that begged for speed. The motorcycle came to a gentle dime-stop. The driver's sneakered feet settling lightly on the asphalt of the road as the light turned yellow.

Joe made no acknowledgment that his solitude had been broken. The weight of his head had numbed his wrist. The driver's helmet came off. Black slick hair slid past her face, settling in severe flips around her shoulders as she bent to the window.

"Hey, stranger," Jun said, surprised and pleased to run into Joe, "Race--" Joe looked up.

"...Ya," her voice died in her throat.

Joe said nothing. His gaze was hot, his vivid eyes red-rimmed with suppresed tears.

Jun's lips parted wordlessly. Her slim fingers clenched on the rim of her helmet. Dismay punched its way into her gut, and bloomed on her face. Joe shut his eyes. She reached out her hand and touched his jaw, her thumb gently brushing his cheek, just to touch him, just to let him know that it would be okay, he would be okay. His eyes opened. He swallowed.

"Jun," his voice was rough.

His eyes slid shut. His face changed, and he was grinning at her.

Jun snatched her hand back.

Joe gunned his engine, downshifted violently and slammed his foot on the gas.

For maybe a microsecond Jun straddled her bike, disoriented by the maelstrom of sound and dust the condor machine left in its wake. Then her helmet was bouncing on the road as she jerked up with a little leap and came down hard on the clutch. She shot forward, her hair unfurling like a flag, as she screamed into the night, an unintelligible collection of sounds that translated into, "Oh, no you don't!"

Joe's laugh spooled out ahead of her.

_What just happened_? Jun wondered. She saw see Joe's self- satisfied smirk in her inner eye. It goaded her. She forgot she didn't have a helmet, she forgot it was an unfamiliar road, and pressed, pressed on, in faith that the beating of her blood and the will of her heart would win her victory. 

Thighs taut, stomach tight she sped along the road. Holding the motorcycle steady as she pushed the envelope. She would win. She had to win.

On the long narrow road they flew, sometimes side-by-side, often neck and neck, the occasional orange lit light revealed their leap-frogging shadows, highlighting the lethal stitchery of their race.

She was panting as her bike thrummed and groaned between her legs. Her eyes watered from the vicious wind. This was like old times, when she and Joe spent every spare minute at the racetracks. Ghosting drivers, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the engines and wheedling the occasional ride.

Joe's arms were corded tight, as he clung to the wheel. The narrow muscles of his lower back solid with tension. He was not alone, and he was laughing. Laughing hard, and his laugh, like Jun's hair unfurled darkly across the night.

The road flowed beneath them, narrowing then widening, dipping ever so slightly in certain intervals. Jun, who'd been a little behind him, swerved to the left, drilling into a tight turn that Joe hadn't seen coming.

"Shit!" Joe scowled as she disappeared from beside him. He fought the wheel, his vehicle shrieking as he forced it to mirror Jun's sudden turn. Down-shift, more gas, up shift, more gas and all the while chanting, "shitshitshit."

The lampposts were now few and far between and the road felt like chatahoochee.

"Shit!" Joe swore as he ran over a pothole.

Red and yellow taillights teased him from ahead.

"Jun," he growled.

The road dipped. His teeth clicked together. Jun's red lights winked out of existence. He was going so fast that he flew through the dip, and landed with a harsh jounce, Jun's taillights brighter then before. He was gaining, flying blind, but gaining, gaining, his teeth barred with admiration.

_Don't look back_, Jun thought. _Don't look back._

Yellow Bob's barricades flashed alongside them, marking the home- stretch. The condor machine's straining engine chewed up the distance between them as the signs cried: Road Ends in 100! Road ends 50 FT! They caught air, Joe's teeth clicked, the end of the road reared up to meet them, the road dipped again. Jun spurted forward, free and clear. Raising a cloud of dust, Joe's car came to a sudden stop. His headlights bleached her resting figure titanium white.

Joe swore at Jun through the windshield. "You cheated!" he accused, jumping out of his car and running at her. 

"You--" gack "--cheated--" wheeze "--first!" she replied, her eyes sparkling. Joe laughed up at the sky. Jun hunched over her knees, coughing hard.

He slapped her back, "Yeah, I guess I did! Good thinking following that road."

She began to reply then doubled over, coughing again.

Joe winced in sympathy. She must have swallowed a bug. "You want something to drink?" he asked. 

"Anything," Jun replied over her hand, and coughed some more.

Joe ran to his car, long arms pumping fluidly. 

Jun watched him. Struck, for the first time in a long time, by his strength and grace. It was different from Ken's. Different from her own. In Utoland he stuck out as foreigner, even from behind. But out West, be it Hawaii, or mainland America, Joe stuck out as something more different still. He cultivated that difference it seemed. In battle it came out as recklessness, and she'd decried it many a time, but tonight, she thought, here and now, as she watched him stick his torso in the passenger window of his vehicle, and raise a ruckus of noise and curses as he dug up something for her to drink, it made her heart expand.

"Here," Joe said, coming up with a hip flask and tossing it to her. It caught light as it flipped end over end, winking with a metallic glint.

Jun caught it with outstretched hand, suppressing all expression as she examined it. Joe had every race car driver's vice in the book. 

"Jun," Joe said, "please don't."

Jun uncapped the flask. Held it, tried not to sniff obviously. 

"Remember when we were kids and used to sneak out to go drinking with the pit-men?" Joe asked.

"I never drank, Joe," she rasped. "I just listened to the stories," but she smiled to take the sting out of the words. She tipped the flask to lips. Her eyes widening in surprise as she tasted the liquid. "This is water!" she exclaimed.

Joe crossed his arms, and leaned against the car, "Yeah, that one's mine. You want the one I keep for girls?"

Her eyes widened. "Joe!" she said.

He reached into his car and brought up another hip-flask, identical to the one in her hand. "C'mon. You really don't expect me to drink and drive, do you?" he asked.

"How many girls have you taken advantage of that way?" Jun demanded.

"I don't need to take advantage!"

She snorted and cried, "Oh, you're the Great Lover Joe?!"

Joe's eyes bugged.

Jun dissolved into laughter.

_Was this Jun_? Joe wondered. Smiling, laughing, giggling, flirting? He smirked, then tried to cover up the smirk. Jun, watching his face, saw everything and laughed harder.

Joe stretched, basking a little in her attention. He bent to touch his toes. His supple gymnast's body moving with his singular grace. She laughed harder.

From the ground-up Joe studied his teammate, "What has gotten into you?" 

Jun pondered this for a few seconds, hopping onto the hood of his car and drawing her jacket tighter around her. The hour was late, later then she was used to, so Joe gave her time. Her eyes were thoughtful. Her hair had flattened out in the driving wind and hung limp around her face. She yawned.

He yawned as well. To his suddenly sleepy eyes she looked warm and soft.

"It's good to be alive," she said.

Joe's shoulders tensed, his spine straightened. The defeated look that had ashed his face earlier that evening came back with sudden force.

"Joe," asked Jun, "What's wrong?"

Joe looked at her, really looked at her, thinking that a guy'd never known she'd killed hundreds of men in the service of the ISO. She looked like a kid again. Like she had when they'd first met and he'd thought her uncomfortably pretty for a boy. Her eyes were that same sudden thick-lashed green and her skin white, as white as it had always been, whiter even. She looked serious, and smart and kind, her lips a promise of all things lush and lovely. Joe shook his head and looked away.

"Joe?" she insisted, going cool with dread. After today's battle, Jinpei had taken her aside and said, "Aniki's trying to kill himself." At the time she'd dismissed the comment. But now...

"Later," he replied, "I'll tell you later."

"Okay."

Then, "Where's your helmet?"  
Backtracking to the starting line took much longer than Joe expected because he was worrying. Worrying over Jun's helmetlessness ("Why didn't you get your helmet, numbskull?!" "You had too much of a head start!") and what he was going to tell Jun when she cornered him.

The stop lights of the intersection blinked off and on. Jun's helmet was where she'd dropped it.

"I can't believe how deserted this place is," she said.

"This is a desert," Joe replied.

He made no protest when she pulled up beside him, nor when she followed him into the rented cabin and sat herself on the couch.

She could not help remarking to herself that the loaned room looked a lot like his place in Utoland. That made her very sad.

"Thirsty?" Joe asked, walking to the fridge.

She was tired, her eyes drooping with fatigue.

"No," she replied. She'd rest her eyes for a few minutes.

Her head settled against the armrest of the couch. She heard the refrigerator door open and shut. Water gush from the tap. Joe murmured something. Jun didn't answer. Joe looked over to where she was curled up in the corner of the couch. He went to get a blanket.

"Sleepy?" he asked as he approached her. 

Her eyes fluttered open, "No."

"You look it," Joe replied.

She sat up, and pulled Joe down beside her. "What's wrong? What were you doing at the stoplight?"

Lot's of things, Joe wanted to say. Only it seemed more logical to put his hands on hers. It felt right to allow his head to drop on her shoulder. Like old times, when he was a new orphan and she was barely a girl and they'd talked in the language of kittens.

Jinpei didn't really liked to be hugged and kissed. Not as much as Joe had. It had gone on for a very long time, despite Nambu's best efforts to impress upon Jun the need to behave like a proper young lady, and for Joe to accept the mores of his adopted country. Then they grew up, and full-fledged adolescence accomplished what Nambu and cultural injunctions never could.

With Joe's hands around her wrists and the memory of his sorrowful face the old need, the old affection, reasserted itself. She freed one hand from his, his fingers rougher then she remembered, and curled it around his shoulder. The fingers of her other hand splayed over the unfamiliar bulge of his bicep, as she said with wonder, "We almost died again today."

Joe said nothing, merely pulled her closer, turning and shifting into a position he hadn't assumed with a girl since Jun was thirteen. He'd been told that his sense of smell would be the first to go. He inclined his head to Jun's hair. She smelled like slightly sweaty Jun. _Brain damage_? he thought, _What brain damage_? and chuckled.

Facing him Jun smiled placidly. Already he seemed better, happier. This was as things should be. She had always been able to make him feel good and he her. When they'd done this as children, he'd been a new orphan and she barely a girl. They'd been grubby little rug-rats who liked cuddling just as much a fighting. She was sick of fighting. Sick of open flame and hard noise and the smell of iron everywhere.

They toed off each others sneakers, Joe giggling a little (he'd always been more ticklish down there). Jun twisted, trying to figure out the right fit of her legs over his. Their bodies had changed so much. 

"Here," Joe said, and half lifted her hip, sliding under her so that she lay half on, half off him. She twisted so that both arms reached over his shoulders, looping herself over him like she'd done when they were younger. This new position brought Joe to sudden stillness.

"Uh, Jun."

"What," she murmured sleepily and rubbed against him. He went light-headed, thrilling at the sweet give of her breasts against his chest.

"I don't remember these," he answered, his head swaying back as he pulled her even closer to him.

Jun could not say who kissed who. Lips met and met, at first almost parallel, soft, and gossamer. Then warmer, softer, wetter, realer, until with shocking awareness Jun knew that she was tasting him was, inside him, lip curved around lip, the secret places of her mouth sought out and revealed by his subtle tongue.

She was in him.

Her mind reeled. He felt so good. Her hands came up and pulled his head closer still. Her fingers crept along his scalp, winding in the sliding strands of his thick hair. She came up for air, dazzled by the heat of his mouth and the darkness of the room.

"Jun," he whispered, eyes still closed. She pressed her face into his shoulder, burying it in his abundant hair. Her thighs rubbed together. She could smell him. He was drying on her mouth. Then he was kissing her again, his hands warm and severe against her burning face, their mouths swimming together, their hair tangling around them. Jun forgot her hands, her will, her mind and breathed only when her body begged her to. "Joe," she inhaled, catching his gasp as she cooled her hot hands against the velvet of his skin.

She could feel his heart, beating, beating, beating against hers. Her stomach felt hollow. Something fluttering light as a fairy inside. Beneath her Joe squirmed, forward, ever forward, one of his hands pressing down on the flat of her back. His fingers dug pale into the soft flesh between the end of her shirt and start of her pants. His other hand had pressed around past the curve of her rear and was rubbing against the narrow wedge of her jeans. Her legs parted. She whimpered, yelped, then sobbed as his hand found better purchase between her denim covered legs.

She fell on him like stars.

Joe moaned, gasping for air. His eyes flickered open. He'd hadn't meant to touch her there. He'd meant to keep his hands out of her shirt. She was kissing him, massaging his chest, grinding down tentatively on his lap, not so tentatively. 

His pelvis leapt in reply, heavy with burning.

They found a rhythm, rubbed against each other, rising together, falling apart, straining, pulling, pushing against each other--

"Oh, God," Joe gulped, and pushed her up and away before he embarrassed them both. Her eyes blinked open in protest, her irises were shading black into green. She loomed over him, her hands on either side of his face. He'd never seen her like this. Her normally set pale face was flushed high with color, red at her temples, and neck.

He'd done this to her.

"Joe," she said, her voice sweet and high.

He blushed, felt it blaze up his neck and into his face.

She bent her head to his, to kiss him again, and again. That taste, that crazy taste of Jun. So good. What about Ken? Their mouths made hungry noises as he sat up, desperate to hold her, to slow down.

And then she touched him. Jun was touching him (waitwaitwait) holding him(himeangel)pressing him(waitplease) squeez-- he ignited, blazing in inner light, his arms, his lips, legs, his stomach, his thighs were everywhere and everywhere was Jun. She felt bright and she felt good, and he had to see her(please) had to see her. He had to see her.

Halting her magical movements he circled her wrists with his hands. She cried out. "Shhhh, Juni, shhh." Their foreheads pasted together, he caressed the back of her head, breathing hard, "Shhh."

She cooed as the flat plane of his joined fingers glided over her ribs, sighed as they curved round to stroke the muscles of her back, the feeling so delicate, so pretty. Her mouth was delicate on his jaw in thanks, on his ear on his mouth. She was straddling his thigh. He could feel her, she was so damn-- her belt, he had to get her belt. ('But what about Ken?' slicked through his thoughts.)

His fingers danced at her waist. His fly was open and his hands were beneath her shirt, her breasts warm pulsing weights in his flexing fingers. Her head was on his shoulder, her eyes half open. Joe murmured something, murmured something soft and low and wondering. Her hand was on his thigh. Shoulder to shoulder they sat, so close, beautifully close.

She needed to be closer still.

She leaned back, breaking contact, with a soft cry Joe reached for her. She pulled off her shirt and came to rest against him again. They breathed in unison, soft and deep.

"Why me?" Joe rasped. His gaze riveted on the sight of his dark fingers on her pale skin. He looked up at her. His eyes colorless in the predawn light.

"Ken," she inhaled deeply. "Ken doesn't. . ." she looked up at Joe. Her fingertips trailed along his shoulder, slid under his arm and stroked the sensitive skin of his armpit, "Ken doesn't want me." 

Shivering, Joe leaned back against the couch, his face set. 

Jun took one of his hands and kissed it repeatedly as dawn made the night a blue-tinged memory. His hand felt small in her grasp. Small and heavy. It was getting lighter out. Somewhere along the line, he'd lost his T-shirt, too. His upper body was scored with battle-scars. His skin, where whole, was a gorgeous olive gold.

He let his hand glide down to Jun's waist.

"Joe," she asked, palming his skin, the scent of his cooling sweat was sharp in her nostrils, "what's going on? Why were you crying?" 

"I'm dying, Jun," he replied, giving voice to his secret, as dawn made the night a soft blue-tinged memory. He added softly, "I don't have much time."

Of course he was. How had she not known it?

"Jun?"

How had she managed to not see it for so long?

Her shoulders shook, her hair spilled black across her white shoulders. The news she'd dreaded since meeting up with him at the cross-roads. The news she'd dreaded to hear. She wept. Wept hard. Her hands were white doves obscuring her face, "I know."

She'd known for a long time.

The End

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Notes: This was inspired by a chance remark Joe made to Ken in the prologue to Alara Roger's Alatan Saga.

Revised: 13 Jan 2000

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